FERRY SERVICE

The layout of the ferry station is similar to that of 30 years ago, but it is more beautiful and many equipments have been upgraded. Now you can scan the code to enter the station. The fare is 2 yuan per person, 2.8 yuan for bicycles or battery cars, and 4 yuan for motorcycles. We walked across the trestle and boarded the ferry. The ferry is larger than before, with stairs leading to the 2nd floor. The second floor is an enclosed cabin with air conditioning and large glass windows on three sides. The rows of seats in the cabin are neat and spacious, and we took a seat by the window. On the trestle, there was a teenager with a backpack pushing a bicycle and hurried to the ferry. I stared at him from a height, and I remembered myself in high school. When I was in high school, I lived near the Dongchang Cinema in Pudong. I rode a 28-inch antelope horn race car to school every day. My school was on Bansongyuan Road in Puxi, close to the Jiangnan Shipyard at that time. I have to take 2 ferries every day to go back and forth. In winter, the daily commute makes me worry. In addition to the time by ferry, it takes me more than an hour to ride from home to school. In order not to be late, I go out very early every day. In winter, the sky is still dark when I go out. At that time, I often had a cold and cough, and the upper body of the racing car was very low, and the cold wind was pouring straight into the neck from the neckline, and the chest was also chilly. I went out wearing thick clothes and a thick scarf, and it didn't take long for me to sweat, soaking the back of my cotton sweater. So I undid the scarf and left the neckline open to dissipate heat, so that the cold wind came in. It's hot and cold, and my colds and coughs never get better. It's more troublesome when it's windy and rainy, and anyone who commutes by bike knows what it's like.

There is an old saying in Shanghai, "I would rather have a bed in Puxi than a room in Pudong." In the early 1990s, most of the facilities for work, study, shopping, entertainment, etc. were located in Puxi. People living in Pudong were not like today. So convenient. At that time, the road traffic across the river was only Nanpu Bridge, Dapu Road Tunnel and Yan'an Road Tunnel. These bridges and tunnels only use cars, and people who use bicycles and mopeds to commute can only cross the river by ferry. In order to meet the needs of millions of people crossing the river, there were dozens of ferry lines on the Huangpu River at that time, and some sections of the river had ferries every one or two kilometers, and ferries came and went on the river in an endless stream. Those who take the ferry are most afraid of encountering foggy weather. The suspension of the ferry in foggy weather causes great trouble for commuting. If it is a solid fog, people will give up and go to the bus instead. The most embarrassing thing is that the fog is not big or small, you can't know whether the ferry will stop sailing. If you ride the car to the ferry only to find that the service is stopped, then you are passive. Those who are not in a hurry will wait at the ferry, and the fog will dissipate when the sun comes out, but most people will turn around and think of other ways. Sometimes the fog is localized, and only part of the river is suspended. Some people will try their luck at other ferries, and maybe they will be able to cross the river from a certain navigable ferry. When the traffic is suspended in foggy weather, police comrades will stop cars at the entrance of bridges and tunnels, and let the passenger cars and cars with vacancies carry people across the river. They also stop empty trucks and set up ramps for people to push bicycles and mopeds onto the trucks to cross the river. I have taken such a ride, once through the Yan'an Road Tunnel to the entrance of the Puxi Tunnel, where the police pushed us down a ramp and put us down. The other time was when we crossed the Nanpu Bridge. We stood in the body of an open-top truck, as if we were driving on white clouds, surrounded by a vast expanse of whiteness, and we could not see the river under the bridge at all. The towering piers and the cables gradually emerged from the thick fog like the body and limbs of a giant, and then disappeared into the rear in a blink of an eye. "Passengers please wait patiently. There are many ships on the river at present, and we will sail later." The crew's voice came from the loudspeaker. I looked at my watch, we've been waiting 15 minutes. The cabins on the second floor are still not full, and the cabins on the first floor are still half empty. Now there are 16 tunnels, 12 bridges and 8 rail lines up and down the Huangpu River, and people's demand for ferries has been greatly reduced. The number of ferry lines has been reduced to 17, and only more than 100,000 people ride every day, and many of them are people like us who come for nostalgia or sightseeing. The waterway traffic on the Huangpu River is still busy, but the types of ships passing by are very different from those of the past. On the Pujiang cruise ship, adorned with neon lights and billboards, tourists chat in their cabins or take pictures of each other in the sun on the deck. A yacht passed close by, and a middle-aged man and an older boy sitting side by side in the driver's seat were probably a father and son. A great ship in the distance blew its whistle, and before long it passed our port side like a sailing town.

At the same time other ships sailed past my memory, such as those iron-hulled cargo ships full of coal, sand or stones, they had low and rudimentary cockpits, the sides were almost flush with the water, and you would worry about them in the slightest wind and waves will sink into the water. Dozens of such cargo ships are connected end to end with cables, and ferries have to stop in the middle of the river for a long time in order to wait for such a fleet to pass. Occasionally, gray warships with canvases on their guns can be seen passing by. They are like samurai who died for fear of disturbing the people, always in a hurry. Our ferry finally opened, like a nimble fat man, with multi-directional propulsion allowing it to spin in place or pan sideways. The ferries of 30 years ago were very nimble, and the ferries of today are better than they were back then. We made a big bend downstream first, avoiding some boats and speeding up to the opposite bank. Passengers watched the scenery of the river and both sides with great interest. The noon sun gave everything a bright brilliance, and the buildings in Lujiazui were dazzlingly bright in the sun. The ferry turned around as it approached the opposite bank, and docked to the pier against the current. I don't know if there are still two crew members standing on the bow and stern on the current ferry, throwing the thick white cables of the arms to the steel bollards on the pier like loops. We went down to the 1st floor and disembarked with other passengers. When I followed everyone along the passage, I was in a trance for a moment, and I seemed to see the boy with a backpack and a bicycle.